The profiling of television viewer preferences is well established in the art. Television networks are particularly interested in viewer likes and dislikes in order to schedule and create the shows that people will want to watch. Advertisers and rating organizations are also among the media forces that drive the television industry.
More recently, manufactures of consumer television electronics and products have also become involved in profiling viewer preferences, in order to provide purchasers with the ability to program their tape and VCR machines easily. It is also necessary to provide friendly, personalized user features, in order to make such electronic products more appealing to buyers.
It has been discovered that merely observing a particular viewer profile of programs that have been selected over a given time period will not always provide the profiler with accurate information. This is because it has been observed that viewers' preferences change with the time of day. For example, a person who turns on his or her television in the morning may be most interested in watching the weather channel, in order to dress appropriately for his or her commute to work. However, the same individual may watch the weather channel in order to obtain tomorrow's forecast and watch a sitcom in the evening. The fact that the viewer watched more weather programs than sitcom programs would not accurately reflect the overall viewer preference.
It has also been observed that viewers having a profile that indicates they watch more sitcoms than operas, for example, may actually prefer operas to sitcoms. There are simply more sitcoms available for television viewing than there are operas.
It would be advantageous therefore, to implement a method of profiling viewer preferences, wherein the viewer can provide his or her input to observed viewing data. Obtaining viewer inputs, however, is fraught with difficulties. Some individuals do not want to be bothered with having to provide survey-type information with respect to their likes and dislikes. Other individuals are more than willing to provide such information, but are confused with graphical representations of their observed behavior.
The present invention seeks to provide a new graphics interface in obtaining viewer preferences. The new graphic interface is based on a time profile of viewer likes and dislikes, wherein heavily weighted preferences proportionally change with the time of day.
In addition, the current invention seeks to graphically represent viewer preferences in bar graph form, since it has been determined that most viewers can more easily identify with, and understand, this type of graphical representation.